2008 Rediscovery Tour
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Princess Marie, Prince Joachim, Helen Cain and Ambassador Cain at Schackenborg Castle. Click for more photos.
12 June 2008 - Day 28 Toftlund - Møgeltønder - 57 km (1871)
After an evening that included a wonderful dinner
at Hotel Dagmar in Ribe, we picked up where we
left off yesterday in Toftlund with a visit to
the Toftlund School. This was without a doubt one
of the best “starts” to a ReDiscovery Day that
we have had all Tour.
We were met outside of the
school by about 25 students from Teacher Robin
Wildfang’s eighth-grade English class who had
planned for me a delightful guided walking tour
of the town and school grounds. Robin has been
here in Denmark for 15 years after marrying a
Dane, and is clearly a very popular and very
effective teacher at this school. She had seen
stories about the ReDiscovery Tour in the media
and reached out to our Embassy offering to host
an event. The students were delightful, and I was
equally thrilled to find a visiting American
student among them. Katie, from the Midwest, was
spending a week in Denmark visiting friends and
happened to be at the school today. The eager
students escorted me throughout the town and
briefed me on the local history. This area is the
part of Denmark that from the 1864 to 1920 was
German. In fact this town was the local seat of
government for Germany. In 1920 the citizens
voted in a referendum to become part of Denmark.
Areas to the south voted to remain German. The
students showed me the “Judges Offices”, now
a boarding school, where there is reportedly
still a ghost wandering about; an innocent man
sentenced to death for a long-forgotten crime,
who is still trying to exact revenge on his
sentencers. We saw the very impressive array of
sports facilities, including skating arenas and
recreational areas currently being built. The
open-air pool is the oldest in Denmark, built in
1943 by some local residents who preferred to use
German concrete for this purpose rather than
building defense bunkers as instructed. We also
saw the old jail, now used as facilities for the
school, and perhaps occasionally for an errant
student.
After the tour I had a wonderful 30-minute
discussion with the students about the Tour, and
was impressed with their responses to my Three
Questions. Their impressions of America were much
less culturally-oriented than other young people I
have met, focused on politics, freedom, size and
power, with the exception of one young friend
whose impression of America was “of Fat
People”! (I assured her that she was not the
only one who had this impression.) They wanted
Americans to know about their environment and
their nature, and their ‘scores” on the third
question were consistent with what I have gotten
from young people throughout Jutland: averaging
7.6 on the “how close are America and
Denmark” question and even higher, around a 9
on the “does it really matter” question. Only
one of the young people had been to America, and
she has been three times as a tourist. LA is her
favorite city. I was really pleased with the
ovation the students gave Helen when she entered
the room; this being her very first ReDiscovery
Tour event! They also asked me some wonderful
questions regarding what Americans think of
Denmark, how I liked it here, why the President
sent me here, and “why can so many people not
get health care in America”. This is something
I have heard before, and convinces me that there
is in this country a very incorrect impression
about health care coverage in America. These
young people are very aware of the world around
them, and are all watching the American
Presidential campaigns with interest.
My new friends from Toftlund School rode with me
for a few km toward Bredebro, but the rain and
the narrow busy roadway cut their trip short and
I reluctantly bid them farewell not far from town
(but I hope to see many of them again in a few
weeks for our July 4 finale in Copenhagen!)
In Bedebro my first stop was at Ecco Shoes, the
amazing Danish success story that is one of the
largest shoe companies in the world. Helen and I
had a very nice visit with Dieter Kasprzak, the
CEO of the company, whose wife Hanni is the
Chairman, and daughter of the founder Karl
Toosbury. It was great to walk in and see a
picture of two of my favorite people on the
screen; President George H. W. Bush, our 41st
President, and his wife Barbara. The President
had written a letter praising the Ecco golf shoe
he had received. This reminded me what a great
thing it was to visit the President at Camp David
two years ago and see him in a pair of Ecco Track
2s! (Director Claus Kjersgaard asked me to let
the President know that the Track 3s were now on
the market.) The history of this great company is
fascinating. The company was started in 1963 and
quickly moved to this small Jutland town because
Karl Toosbury couldn’t find enough ‘healthy
and reliable workers’ in Copenhagen. The
founder’s innovative spirit and commitment to a
family atmosphere soon put the company on the
“right foot” (no pun intended). But his
technological development in the mid-70s really
was the “pivotal point” of the company’s
history Claus said, when Karl developed a
technique to directly inject the sole onto the
upper shoe, providing extraordinary comfort. This
was a revolutionary development at the time, and
is reflected in the poem that the company uses as
its motto: “We trust in man but still we use to
shape our feet to fit the shoes. A future world
with less conceit will shape our shoes to fit our
feet.” (poet Piet Hein.) Ecco is the only major
shoe manufacturer that owns its own factory, and
ensures that its family-oriented Danish values
are reflected in each one if its locations. You
can sense their values in the building; which
Klaus describes as being Genuine, Passionate,
Uncompromising, Impatiently Curious, Authentic,
and Danish. Their newest line of running shoes
are going to feature Yak hide, which Klaus
describes as three-times stronger than
conventional leather, they have discovered.
Ecco’s largest market is in America.
Our next stop was the Tønder Rådhus where Mayor
Pedersen escorted us up the 150-step high old
water tower to what is now a scenic overlook of
the town where we met with the media and were
served us a very nice lunch. This town has been
in the international spotlight recently because
of the Royal Wedding of Prince Joachim and
Princess Marie at Schackenborg Castle which is
just 5 km down the road from Tønder. The Mayor
presented us with a very nice book that the Town
has printed to commemorate the occasion, and gave
us a “birds eye tour” of the town from the
scenic perch. The area had a stormy past with
Germany, and of course is the only part of
Denmark which actually “voted” to be Danish,
in 1920. Thus, the Mayor says, this area has the
strongest nationalistic feeling of any area of
the country.
As we walked back down the steps of the tower
Helen and I enjoyed looking at the exhibit of
chairs designed by the famous Danish designer
Hans J. Wegner. These are incredibly beautiful
designs, and included the “Classic Chair”
made famous when it was used by John F. Kennedy
and Richard Nixon for the first televised
Presidential debate in American history, in 1960.
They have a picture of that historic occasion in
the lobby. There is a wonderful exhibit of Danish
antique furniture in the Museum, which Museum
Director was kind enough to show us through.
Helen was really disappointed that we could not
spend more time at the antique furniture
exhibition, but we had to get down the road to
Schackenborg Castle were at 2:00 we were received
by the smiling newlyweds, His Royal Highness
Prince Joachim and his lovely bride, Her Royal
Highness Princess Marie. The delightful and
energetic Royal Couple have just returned two
days ago from their honeymoon and I think we were
among the first guests to visit with them upon
their return. Princess Marie and Prince Joachim
have captured the attention of the Danish public,
and it is no surprise, as they are a warm and
engaging couple. (We have met on a number of
prior occasions, including when I was honored to
witness Prince Joachim capture the title in a
classic motor car race last year, but it is the
first time Helen and I have visited with both of
them together and the first time we have been to
Schackenborg.) Princess Marie and her Bichon
Frise ‘Apple’ have clearly brought a great
vibrance to the estate, (though I look forward to
seeing how Apple gets along with the Prince’s
cocker spaniel ‘Churchill’). Over coffee,
carrot cake, brownies and biscotti (yes, this
peloton travels on its stomach) the Prince shared
with us the very impressive operation of his 1000
hectare estate, and the “Five Farms” brand
that he launched several years ago. The estate is
a fully-integrated agricultural conglomerate, and
produces everything from Christmas Trees to beer.
Their newest undertaking is the beef business, and
with the Prince’s innovative leadership, they
have quickly become the largest beef-producing
operation in Denmark.
After coffee, we hopped in the Prince’s Land
Rover and headed off for a tour of the massive
and diverse farming operation. As we were
leaving Princess Marie was not too happy to learn
that Apple, as we left the room, had helped
herself to the uneaten carrot cake and brownies.
I think Apple was probably just showing off for
Emu, our stuffed mascot who Philip had
unceremoniously plopped down beside her for a
priceless photograph. (Over a later private
dinner with the Royal Couple, Helen and I were
relieved to see that Apple was not suffering from
the sweet indulgence.)
In addition to seeing the beef, Christmas tree,
wheat (for beer), and potato production of Prince
Joachim’s expansive farming operation, the
Prince took us to two very special nearby sites.
The first was the town of Rudbøl right on the
border between Denmark and Germany. The divide
between the two countries is marked by granite
markers running down the middle of the town’s
single paved street, and we took photographs to
commemorate the moment. (I probably risked an
international incident by stepping one foot over
the line without first obtaining permission from
my counterpart in Berlin.) The second site was
one of the most unique and important in the
history of Denmark, and though I had heard of
what had happened here, I had no idea the site
was in this part of the country. A few meters off
the main road stand two large rock sentinals, each
about two meters high. These large monuments mark
the sites where in 1694 a local farming woman
walking home, stumbled upon the first of the
“Guldhornene”, the Golden Horns that are
considered the most important cultural artifacts
from ancient Danish history. The second Golden
Horn, virtually identical to the first, was found
about thirty feet away 96 years later, in 1790.
The Horns are believed to be older than 2,000
years and contained striking figures in gold of
humans and animals in a variety of poses and
actions, along with brief text in the ancient
Ruinic language. Tragically, the original horns
were stolen and melted down in the late 1800s,
but we know exactly what they looked like from
two life-size paintings done of them around the
time they were first discovered. These paintings
now hang in Shackenborg, and I got goosebumps
when I gazed at them later in the evening. (I got
even larger goosebumps when Prince Joachim brought
out and allowed Helen and me to handle and examine
the two exact replicas that were made 100 years
ago and presented as a gift to his great great
Grandfather King Frederick VIII.) These are a
priceless part of Denmark’s ancient past, and
suggest a remarkably advanced civilization that
had mastered the meticulous craft of intricate
goldsmithing. It is believed that the Golden
Horns must have been cast into the bog, which
this part of Denmark used to be, in some sort of
religious rite; most likely to appeal to “the
gods” for relief from a pending weather-related
catastrophe. Prince Joachim provided us one of the
great highlights of the Tour, and our time in
Denmark, with his gracious hospitality, and this
special encounter with Danish history.